How could you use yours?

As a production printer, we’ve seen it all! The versatility of booklets and our ability to add custom content means that they’re versatile enough for a range of uses if you want to create a brochure, pamphlet or catalogue. Many clients use them as corporate or business product to promote their company and any relevant services. when it comes to your booklet design, you can take advantage of a range of sizes and binding types depending on your requirements. If you need something compact and easy to distribute our unique A6 size would be the perfect portable advertisement! If you require something with a little more information but still small and portable, then A5 is a fantastic choice. For something which needs more content, try A4.

Need a printer in the UK?

If you’re looking for a commercial printer, then look no further than FastPrint! You get fantastic quality, speedy turnaround, free delivery for orders over £50 and the FastPrint Promise for true peace of mind, so if you’re unhappy for any reason, we will re-print or refund your order. If you need a design, we can even create a free basic one for you! Select your type of binding above and then enter your order requirements to get an instant price and find out how cheap we can really be! Alternatively, if you need some design inspiration or want to know more about how to order one , just get in touch for some free and friendly help from our UK team.

History of booklets and brochures

They are some of the oldest forms of printed material. As printing became more widespread in the 16th and 17th Century, pamphlets were the ideal way of getting information and entertainment to the masses. Cheap and quick to produce and easy to distribute, news, songs, romantic stories and verses were spread to large audiences. Some of these early versions are among the rarest and most valuable collectible printed materials today – a 4-page booklet announcing Columbus’s discovery of the New World in 1493 is currently worth around half a million pounds. But it was early political and religious uses that have had the most lasting social impact. In the religious upheavals of the 17th Century they were so powerful at changing public opinion that there were several laws regulating their production, especially in France, where political booklets by the likes of Voltaire and Rousseau helped to fuel the French Revolution. During the revolution, anonymous workers parodied the Queen and the nobility in verse and cartoons. Some of the most famous philosophical works in history were first produced as pamphlets during this time – Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man among them.

As newspapers and magazines took over from them as the main source of political news and opinion, printers began to find a new use for the format. The 19th Century saw the advent of the commercial brochure, which were designed to sell products or promote a company. Printed sales versions had been around since the 17th Century, when seed catalogues and almanacs were printed and sold, but it was the Industrial Revolution that saw it really take off. Welsh entrepreneur Pryce Pryce-Jones set up the first mail order company in1861. He came up with an innovative way of getting his Welsh flannel textiles to a wide audience by printing and posting it across Britain by train, then mailing the products people ordered. Florence Nightingale and Queen Victoria were among the people to receive them and order flannel garments. Luxury retailer Tiffany was the first company in the USA to print a sales brochure to use for mail order in 1845.

The Industrial Revolution in the 19th Century also saw the explosion of another use for this type of printing – the technical manual. As more and more machines were invented and sold, for everything from heavy industry to automating household chores, manufacturers needed to tell people how to use them, and getting an instruction manual printed to go with the product was the cheapest way of doing that. More recently online print-on-demand services have made the format available to everyone, from small businesses needing promotional material to local clubs and individuals.

How are they printed?

Printing and binding methods have played an important part in the history of brochures. Where more expensive books were stitched together tightly by hand, early pamphlets were loosely stitched or unbound, a cheaper and quicker production method. Saddle stitch, for example, gets its name from the saddle-shaped stand that pages are laid across while being stitched together. In the 19th Century, the invention of steam-powered printing presses and other technology meant that glue could be used to quickly and neatly bind pages, leading to cheaper production of perfect bound booklets and paperback books. More recent technology has led to the introduction of more technical binding methods such as wiro bound.